More space, for a lot less

Shawn Conner, Vancouver Sun02.22.2013

Crystal Williams and her boyfriend Dan Rocha are moving to South Surrey from Vancouver’s West End this month. They will be trading their approximately 600-sq.-ft. apartment for a townhouse three times the size. Bikes and skies will no longer be stored in the living room.

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Crystal Williams and her boyfriend are typically active Vancouverites. And they would have liked to have stayed in the city, but they just couldn’t find the space they wanted for the price they could afford.

And so, instead of buying in Vancouver, they move out of their one-bedroom West End apartment on Feb. 28 to take possession of a three-bedroom townhome (with three baths and a den) in Surrey.

“We were tired of having to park our skis and our bikes in our living room,” Williams said. “We were looking at two bedrooms in Vancouver and we were not impressed with what we were seeing in our price range.”

Williams, a Macdonald Realty agent, took her boyfriend to look at new South Surrey developments Morgan Crossing and South Point Exchange.

“We were kind of blown away,” Williams said. “He’s a chef … and the kitchens are just massive compared to what you can get downtown.”

Surrey is booming, and one reason is its affordability compared to its pricier Vancouver neighbour.

According to December figures, a 1,200- to 1,400-square-foot three-bedroom townhouse in Surrey is available for about $312,000. That will get you a one-bedroom condo in East Van with half the floor space. The average detached house in central Surrey cost $579,000; on the Vancouver east side, a similar house is worth $1,081,700.

For many, moving to Surrey just makes sense.

“With all the new developments, the developers are offering really great incentives for young people,” Williams said. “That’s why I got pulled into that. I wasn’t even planning on looking for something like that for myself. I was looking for a client. I couldn’t believe what the incentives were.”

With a population of half a million, Surrey is B.C.’s second-largest city. Anywhere from 1,000 to 1,200 people move to Surrey each month. Since 2006, its population has increased by 20 per cent, or 85,000 people. It’s estimated Surrey and Vancouver will be tied, with about 750,000 each, by 2040.

“Definitely in South Surrey, I’ve seen a lot of growth,” Williams said. “It’s insane the amount of people moving to the area, and the new development. It’s exciting.”

In the past, she said, people from Surrey would have to go downtown or to Burnaby for shopping. “Now you don’t have to do that. Everything you need is out that way now.”

What a lot of people don’t realize, Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said, is how fast Surrey has grown in a relatively short amount of time.

“I don’t think people realize the transition in terms of how vast it is,” Watts said. “It’s been evolving and changing over time, but over the past five to seven years, we’ve certainly seen some significant changes.”

There was $1.3 billion worth of construction, including residential and commercial, in Surrey in 2012. “That’s been consistent for the past seven or eight years,” Watts said.

Last year, 2,100 new businesses started in Surrey. And the Real Estate Investment Network has named Surrey the Best Place to Invest each year in British Columbia for the past four years.

And Surrey has the lowest business taxes and property taxes in the Lower Mainland.

It’s impossible to say how many of the recent settlers are from Vancouver proper. However, it seems like Williams and her boyfriend aren’t the only ones.

“I was holding an open house in South Surrey, and a lot of people were coming from other areas, from Richmond, Burnaby, quite a few from Vancouver,” Williams said. “I have noticed a lot more people coming out that way. Maybe it’s the new developments, or that they can get so much more room for a more reasonable price than you can in Vancouver.”

For some people, though, the physical move requires a mental shift.

Though she’s now “counting the days,” as she puts it, Williams admits that the decision to move out of Vancouver “wasn’t the easiest thing. We really enjoy being downtown. But I think being downtown is great when you’re in your twenties. When you get older, you crave a little more space.”

For some, the prospect of a long commute can be intimidating.

Though Jennifer Caluza and her husband Lawrence recently bought in Surrey, that hadn’t been the newlyweds’ original intention.

“We really wanted to move on the other side of the bridge, because I work downtown,” said Caluza, a lab technician at St. Paul’s Hospital. Her husband is a cook at a Richmond hotel. “But because of prices, we went for space over location.”

1They were looking in New West and south Burnaby. “We were finding very small, very old places. We didn’t want somewhere we’d have to do a lot of work on, we wanted a move-in ready kind of place. And in Surrey, we found double the space.”

Everything’s bigger in Surrey, she said, for the same money.

“The layout of the home itself, it was something we really wanted. Just the amount of space got us. Especially since we’re planning to have a family soon. We don’t want to have a small place then move again. We want a place where we can live for a while.”

Another barrier for some may be Surrey’s less-than-savory reputation. But that’s changed, too.

Bob Rempel, like Williams a Macdonald real estate agent, moved recently from Burnaby to Surrey. “When I moved out here, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect,” he said. “You hear all these rumours but it’s not what you think. People out here are friendly. There’s riff-raff sure, but there’s riff-raff anywhere. East Van isn’t what it used to be either. You never used to buy million-dollar homes in East Van but there are a lot of them around there now.”

Katrina Amurao, an agent with ReMax, agrees. “If you look at it per capita, the crime rate in Surrey is not bad. It just seems bad because of what you see on TV and read in the paper,” Amurao said.

“But Surrey is a big city. Most of the time, only one area is being featured when there are crimes. In Vancouver, you often find the same crimes.”

Once she shows clients around, they appreciate the city more, Amurao said. Because she grew up there, Caluza didn’t have any preconceptions about Surrey. Her husband, who was raised in Richmond, was aware of the city’s reputation. But, she said, they put that aside during their search.

“When we started looking for homes, I had a feeling,” Caluza said. “I bet I’m going to find a place in Surrey.”

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